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How to Generate Leads with Instagram Stories

Did you know that Instagram is amongst the leading social media websites to gain attention for your brand and generate leads? This means if you are not using Instagram to generate leads already, you are certainly missing out on countless opportunities to capture the easiest and best leads on social media. Let’s present you with some statistics that justify our statement and will get you thinking.

Instagram currently has 1 billion monthly active users.

Instagram stories have 400 million daily active users.

15-25% of story viewers swipe up to follow a link and engage directly with a brand’s website.

300 million users interact with Instagram stories daily.

These facts highlight that if used effectively, Instagram can help you build leads and gain recognition for you brand. However, when it comes to using Instagram stories to business advantage, many marketers are still unaware of the right lead generation techniques.

In this article, we will discuss some strategies to leverage Instagram stories for business promotion. But before we get into how you can effectively promote your brand/business and generate leads from Instagram stories, let’s understand “why you should be using Instagram stories for lead generation in the first place?”

Why Marketers Should Use Instagram Stories to Generate Leads?

Instagram Stories Make for an Easy Marketing Platform: Instagram allows users to add captivating stickers, text and even draw on their posts to make their marketing content more eye-catchy and engaging. You can also add outbound links in your stories, making it easier for your audiences to connect to your website.

Instagram Stories Has a Low Exit Rate: In order to convert a visitor into a lead, it is necessary to keep them engaged. According to a survey, the average exit rate for Instagram stories is merely 5%, which clearly means Instagram users love to see stories and check out posts to the end. That said, posting stories about your products, services and business updates will help keep your audiences informed about what’s going around your brand while increasing brand awareness.

Instagram and Instagram Stories are Gaining in Popularity: Marketers are interested in generating leads on platforms where user engagement is massive. Currently, with 1 billion active users, Instagram is the fastest growing social media platform.

Now, that you are aware of the potential of Instagram stories, it’s time to tell you the right way to generate leads with the help of Instagram stories.

Before you start with a strategy, you must create a plan that is based on your ability to generate leads with Instagram stories. Here are some ways to set up a comprehensive approach toward using Instagram to generate leads.

Step 1: Establish your Target Audience

The first step in creating a business profile to reach maximum or potential users is to set up your target audience. Establishing audience persona beforehand helps you target the right people while saving you time, money and effort. It also makes it easier for you to tailor the content, message to specific genre of audience. In other terms, setting up audience personas helps streamline your marketing efforts by sending your brand message to the desired audience. However, you have to figure out if Instagram is a preferred social media channel for your audience. And, if you discover that a good percentage of your target audience uses the channel actively, consider moving onto the next step.

Step 2: Gear up with your Website Campaign

When users jump from your Instagram stories to your website, you must give them something to stay there for long. Follow these tips to learn how you can make the pages linked to your Instagram stories, conversion-friendly.

Build Instagram Specific Landing Pages: When redirecting users to your website from your Instagram story, make sure to keep the promise you mentioned in the story. If your message and promise are different, it can create confusion, inducing users to think that they have been sent to the wrong page or even tricked and leave your website quickly.

Keep your Message Persuasive: Ensure everything from the on-page headline to the CTA, conveys your message to the audience. To generate leads with Instagram stories, your message should be as appealing and engaging as possible. Key elements that leave a greater impact on users when redirected to landing page are:

Headline: Keep it crisp, catchy and to the point.

Image: Engage and highlight the benefit mentioned in the headline.

CTA: The message should entice user attention and ultimately encourage them to click on the message.

Get your Follow up Ready after the Conversion: Make sure the right e-mails, outreach, remarketing whatsoever essential after the conversion are set up perfectly, so that you don’t find yourself in a “what-now” situation.

Lastly, make sure you are GDPR compliance and protect the personal information and data of your users.

Step 3: The Right Way to Create Instagram Stories

After setting up with website campaigns, it’s time to work on building and (most importantly) improving your Instagram presence. While following the above mentioned guidelines, you need to create content that interests and engages your audience. Here are a few things to keep in mind.

Instead of filling your one story with lot of information, create short 1-2 lines stories with easy CTAs and ask the user to swipe up for/to receive (brand product).

If you want more users to know about your brand, team up with influencers and give them access to your Instagram stories for 24 hours. By doing so, more and more people from influencer’s list will come to trust your brand, which will cause your traffic to rise and leads to flock.

Hosting an Instagram giveaway or running a contest is an effective way to generate leads with Instagram stories. After all who doesn’t love freebies?

Last, but not least, keep in mind that the success of your website campaign depends on your ability to test, measure and improve. So, don’t get caught up in vanity metrics but focus on improving the elements that will make your brand a success amongst your audience.

Follow the tips provided in this article to help you generate a large number of leads from Instagram stories, but you need to be creative and tactical. Make sure to limit story posts to some extent. As the number of posts in your story increases, the overall completion rate decreases.

Besides, building engagement with high-quality stories is easy but converting viewers into customers is what can be difficult for you. That’s why it is necessary to plan everything.